Author: openjargon

• Jon McNeill, VC investor, was a Tesla executive for nearly 3 years and now sits on GM's board.
• He told Business Insider that automakers conduct teardowns of competitors' vehicles all the time.
• McNeill said Tesla was a "learning sponge" that took valuable lessons from Chinese EVs.

Automakers are constantly learning from their competitors in China. Tesla, one of the leading EV companies, is no exception.

Jon McNeill, the former president of Tesla's global sales and marketing who now sits on General Motors' board, told Business Insider that Tesla has torn down Chinese EVs and that the lessons learned can be seen in some of Tesla's most popular models.

"Tesla is a learning sponge," McNeill, who was at the EV company between 2015 and 2018, said.

During his tenure, Model 3 was in its infamous "production hell," and Tesla had just teased the first image of the Model Y.

The former Tesla executive said one lesson learned from Chinese EVs was the reuse of parts — using some of the same guts of one model for another — and that can be seen "across the 3 and the Y."

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in a 2019 earnings call that the Model Y shared about three-quarters of its parts with the Model 3, allowing for easier production ramp-up.

A spokesperson for Tesla did not return a request for comment.

Another level of reusing

McNeill didn't name which Chinese EVs Tesla tore down during his tenure, but said he's recently seen BYD, the leading EV maker in China, take the technique of reusing parts to another level at a teardown with GM.

"The Chinese engineers are really disciplined about reusing parts underneath the hood that the customer can't see, and they save a lot of money that way," he said.

It's not a unique concept to Chinese automakers; the automotive industry has long relied on using the same parts from one model of car for another in an automaker's lineup, including components such as the steering wheel or the turn-signal stalk.

BYD and other Chinese automakers, however, are distinctive in the degree to which they reuse parts down to the ancillary components of a vehicle, from the battery packs to the heat pumps and motors inside the car seats, McNeill said.

"If you tear down all the BYDs — same windshield wiper motor across all of them; same heat pump across all of them; same conduit across all of them," he said. "In other words, there's not a team that's designing a particular model, and they're off on their own."

McNeill added that the technique was "super smart because a windshield wiper motor really doesn't change or add to the experience."

This practice is different from platform-sharing, in which the vehicle frame or the underlying architecture can be the same across models. Platform-sharing has become a central practice for EV automakers.

McNeill said the extent to which Chinese EV makers are reusing parts is not a common sight at other legacy automakers.

"Toyota uses completely different heat pumps, wiper motors, and seat actuators for each model. In other words, the guts of a Corolla is almost completely different from a Camry," he said.

Spokespeople for BYD and Toyota did not return a request for comment.

New automakers need to cut costs

Reusing parts is crucial for any automaker to scale production efficiently and reduce costs. That could be even more true for emerging automakers.

"There's a reason only one auto company has been started and scaled in the last hundred years, and it's because it's really hard. It's really, really hard and it's really capital-intensive," McNeill said, referring to Tesla. He added that a US EV company like Tesla needs to be "absolutely relentless" at reducing costs.

EV makers like Tesla, BYD, and Rivian are able to reuse parts at deeper levels because they're also highly vertically integrated companies, meaning the automaker develops and manufactures some of their car parts in-house. This level of control over design and production can enable automakers to standardize more parts and produce at higher speeds.

Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe previously told Business Insider that his company did a teardown of Xiaomi's SU7 and praised the Chinese carmaker's "heavily vertically-integrated technology platform." However, the CEO said there was nothing new about the way Xiaomi or other Chinese EV makers made their cars that Rivian could learn to make electric vehicles cheaper.

"Cost — we understood how they've arrived there," Scaringe said, adding: "There's nothing we learned from the teardown."

• Devi Parikh is a former senior director of generative AI at Meta, and the co-CEO of an AI startup.
• She has a Ph.D., but said you don't need one to do cutting-edge AI work.
• Seeing ideas through to the end has been instrumental to her success in the industry, she said.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with 41-year-old Devi Parikh, who lives in San Francisco. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

The seed of my passion for AI was planted in the early 2000s when I studied electrical and computer engineering at college. I was exposed to a type of machine learning called pattern recognition.

In 2009, I completed a Ph.D. in computer vision at Carnegie Mellon — well before the current excitement around LLMs and generative AI. But we had the same goal: make machines more intelligent.

Next, I moved into research and teaching roles, and in 2016, I spent a year as a research scientist at Facebook AI Research, or FAIR. Following that, I'd spend my springs and summers at FAIR in Menlo Park, California, and my falls teaching computer vision at Georgia Tech.

Over time, I enjoyed Meta more than my professorship, and I transitioned to a full-time role in 2021, eventually becoming a senior director of GenAI.

In 2024, I left Meta to start an AI company called Yutori, alongside my husband and our friend.

Here's what I've learned about getting into and succeeding in AI after over 15 years in the industry.

1) Don't assume you need a Ph.D. to do cutting-edge AI work

Professor and research scientist roles in AI might list a Ph.D. as a requirement, but there are other cutting-edge jobs in this space.

There are good reasons to do a Ph.D, like if you want to work in academia or explore certain ideas. But if your end goal is doing interesting AI work and learning how the sausage is made, you could spend those five to six years at startups or big labs instead.

You can also try side projects, making use of open source code and online communities to get your hands dirty.

If you keep putting in the time and effort to whatever you're doing, you'll be able to stand out, and you'll also have learned a bunch of skills along the way.

I think the perception that a Ph.D is necessary in this industry has changed over time. We don't take them into consideration much when hiring at Yutori, where we're trying to build AI agents that can help people with digital chores, like looking for apartments or buying headphones.

Instead, we look for people with relevant experience, such as in training models, and how candidates perform in technical interviews involving coding problems and system design questions.

2) Keep your professional identity flexible

Between 2011 and 2013, there was a "deep learning wave," when the AI community began to realize the effectiveness of deep neural networks.

Some fellow researchers tied their identity to the tools they had worked with and were hesitant to transition to deep models, even though it was clear they worked much better for the problems we were addressing.

This field evolves rapidly, and if evidence tells you new tools work better, don't hold onto your past tool set. Holding on to your professional identity, such as by seeing yourself only as an academic, can also be detrimental.

I also learned not to hold on to research areas. I worked on computer vision during my Ph.D, then multimodal problems, and later generative models for images and videos. At the time, I didn't know ChatGPT was coming, and that generative AI would suddenly become a high priority in tech. If I'd held onto my identity as a computer vision researcher without exploring these other things, I would've missed out on opportunities.

3) Pursue your genuine interests, not what you think you should do

On paper, my job at Meta was amazing, and you probably wouldn't leave it to start a company if you were being strategic about moving up in your career, and knew the success rate of startups.

It may be unclear whether an opportunity is the right move strategically, but I find it easy to put time and effort into things I think will be fun, and produce better quality work that gets recognized.

4) Follow through on ideas

Seeing things through to the end — 100%, not 95% — may be the single most important thing that's helped me stand out and achieve what I have.

For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, I started a series on YouTube called "Humans of AI," where I interviewed around 20 AI researchers in my network about their daily habits, strengths, and insecurities. I thought seeing the human side of the AI researchers we put on a pedestal would show folks in the community they could have a similar level of impact.

People loved it, and it made me more visible. I've met people at conferences who might not have known about my research, but saw the series.

Many people are excited 20 or 30% into the execution of their ideas, then their interest tapers off, leaving behind a bunch of unfinished projects. If you haven't seen something through to the end, it can't have its impact or lead you to the next thing.

If there's something you'd like to do, just go do it, instead of overanalyzing and not taking steps forward.

Do you have a story to share about building a career in AI? Contact this reporter at ccheong@businessinsider.com.

• After my parents divorced, my dad had more kids, but we were all raised as siblings.
• When my dad and one of my sisters died, my other siblings helped me deal with the grief.
• I will thank my dad eternally for making sure we were all close.

Within 19 days, I experienced both the sudden death of my baby sister and my father. Even though my five siblings and I had different mothers, we all shared the same father, who fostered close connections with us from a young age.

Although we grew up apart, we spent holidays, birthdays, and summers together throughout our lives and have come to love each other deeply. I never called my two brothers and sister from another mother my "step" or "half" siblings; they are just my brothers and sister.

My dad visited often

When my parents divorced, I was 7, my middle sister was 5, and my baby sister was only 2.

Shortly after they were separated, my dad left New York to move to Mexico for a job. He ensured that his contract required the company to cover the plane fare for us three to fly several times a year for visits. That's why when he remarried and had children with my stepmom, we became close with our new brothers and sister.

All of us six children got along well from the start. It was as if we were all part of the same symphony, constantly creating synchronized, lovely music. When we were teenagers, Dad would rent houses for us to enjoy in Mexico during Christmas, and after he moved back to the US, he'd rent houses for us to enjoy Thanksgivings in Florida and eventually family reunions in upstate New York. During these times, we cooked, danced, walked, and did yoga together.

As we all grew up, we started our adult lives on opposite coasts. But we still often fly or drive to spend time together. We talk on the phone regularly, processing marriages, divorces, and our own children's challenges.

My siblings showed up for me

When our sister, Jenny, was in the ICU dying, my brothers and sister dropped everything to be with me and my middle sister, here in California. My sister, who lives in Idaho, was able to join us at the hospital within hours. Me, my two sisters, and other nearby family held hands while Jenny transitioned. My brother, who lives in Washington, D.C., arrived within days. My other brother's flight from Florida was canceled that day, but he joined us virtually.

Having the support of my four other siblings within days of Jenny's passing made grieving bearable. My out-of-town brother and sister stayed for ice cream nights, meals where we shared our funniest Jenny stories. They knew Jenny and I were like one neuron with two bodies, so my sisters and brothers called me daily in the following weeks to check on me.

Shortly after our dad died

When my dad learned of Jenny's death, it was as if a dart shot into his heart. Crying, he told one of my sisters, "I'm done, I'm calling it." Eighteen days later, he was gone. The five of us remaining offspring were stunned. Within hours, my two brothers and sister booked flights again and jumped in and helped create slide shows, music lists, programs, and planning two celebrations for one weekend.

During this stressful process, we never fussed or disagreed. Three of my siblings are agnostic, yet Jenny's trust specified her celebration of life be held at our Soka Gakkai International Buddhist Center, where the mantra we chanted, Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, would occur. She also specified that everyone wear colorful clothing and that R&B music be played. Everyone agreed on it all. I noticed at her service that my brothers, sister, and their kids, who are not Buddhist, joined in the chanting to honor Jenny. Each of my sisters and brothers spoke in front of the 150 people present, praising Jenny's irreverent spirit.

Dad didn't want any service. Still united, we decided to honor him by gathering at a local hotel and watching a slideshow of our favorite memories with him, spanning eight decades. We opted to tell our favorite stories about Dad that day.

During the weekend, the five of us hiked, swam, cried, and mourned together. While those two days were sad, they were also joyful because we were together. Belly laughter filled the hours, too. The cascade of care from my clan transformed what could have been a sad month into a time of endearment. Whenever we are in the same place, it's as if waves of happiness wash over us.

That intense month brought the five of us closer. I thank Dad eternally for making sure we six bonded as kids so that our love would last forever.

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John Morgan has an estimated wealth of $1.5 billion, according to Forbes, placing him on its 2025 Billionaires List.

Morgan started his personal-injury firm, Morgan & Morgan, in 1988. Today, he has offices in all 50 US states and employs more than 1,000 lawyers. Morgan pioneered legal advertising, putting his face on ads across hundreds of US cities.

Other than his law firm, Morgan owns a collection of science museums, malls, billboard companies, and even a crime and punishment attraction that houses the original white Bronco that O.J. Simpson used to flee from the police.

Morgan sat down with Business Insider to discuss how he accumulated his wealth, the tragic motivation that led him to personal-injury law, the power and responsibility of wealth, and the dangers he believes a globally increasing wealth gap will one day create for both the rich and the poor.

For more:

https://www.forthepeople.com/

• In five years' time, our jobs will look different because of AI.
• The consulting firm EY has given its employees an AI tool to help them anticipate what will change.
• I wondered if ChatGPT or Gemini could do the same for me as a reporter.

A leader at the Big Four firm EY recently told me that the firm has introduced an AI tool to help their employees navigate the uncertainty around jobs that the new technology is creating.

It's part of an internal training program known as AI Now 2.0, which prompts EY employees to answer a series of questions about their job, day-to-day responsibilities, and overall deliverables.

They upload the answers to EYQ, the firm's internal ChatGPT-like tool, and it generates an analysis of how their current role might change because of the impact of AI. The goal is to help them identify the skills, knowledge, and abilities they might need in the future.

Most industries are facing AI-triggered upheaval, but professional services firms are in a particularly tight spot.

Consultants are the experts that other businesses turn to for advice, meaning the pressure is on to make AI work internally. While it presents opportunities, AI is also forcing firms to reconsider long-held pricing models, talent structures, and the services they offer.

Newsrooms are just as exposed to AI's unpredictability and opportunity.

Inspired by EY, I wanted to see if AI could predict how my job as a reporter will change over the next five years.

My prompts

I told both chatbots to act like "an organizational strategist," programming them to respond like someone who has done expert research on the possible impact that AI will have on my job rather than provide chatty advice.

I described myself as a "reporter for Business Insider" who covers the Big Four professional services firms and workplace culture, and listed some of my key job responsibilities.

Then I asked for a future role analysis, asking the chatbots to highlight only the most significant changes.

ChatGPT

ChatGPT predicted that AI will increasingly take on tasks like structural drafting, information-gathering, and generating background context in stories. It said there will be a suite of "built-in extras" to support the publishing process in real time, like smart templates and pulling up older coverage immediately.

With tools at my disposal to help speed up the reporting process, my edge as a reporter will come from providing "leaked memos, off-the-record sentiment, organizational politics, and nuanced interpretations that AI cannot surface on its own," according to ChatGPT.

I pushed ChatGPT a bit more, asking what new knowledge and skills I'd need to succeed as AI changes my industry, and how I could mitigate some of the key ethical and legal risks.

It told me to develop AI fluency by learning to prompt effectively, evaluate AI outputs critically, and use analytics to flag stories earlier.

On ethics, the big takeaway was essentially: don't trust AI outputs, and you'll be fine — a reassuring conclusion that also neatly undermined my entire experiment.

But ChatGPT had a message of encouragement: If I follow its upskilling guidelines and evolve with the tools, then my future job will not be threatened by AI.

"Your role sits at the intersection of access + judgment + context — areas where AI consistently falls short," the tool told me.

Gemini

Gemini's response to my initial prompt was more impressive, if a little overwhelming.

The tool produced a 3400-word strategy document for me titled "The Alogorithmic Nexus: A Future Role Analysis for the Business Insider Big Four Reporter in the era of Generative AI."

Perhaps the deep analysis should have been unsurprising given that Google launched the latest update to its AI model, Gemini 3, this month to rave reviews.

Gemini said that AI's "primary impact" will be undermining reporters' ability to get scoops, as companies develop AI systems for corporate surveillance and secrets detection. Journalists need an "immediate upgrade in secure sourcing tradecraft," it warned.

This suggestion was surprising to me, as typically reporters avoid using any digital footprint a company could monitor when talking to employees — see Business Insider's guide here. I'm not sure how AI would change that.

Like ChatGPT, Gemini said AI tools will help augment the research and writing process, and that I'll spend less time drafting and more time on verification.

On skills, Gemini gave me more detailed advice, suggesting I develop RAG literacy to improve my algorithmic research and use AI tools like Reality Defender to support digital verification.

Google's tool was more cautious about my future outlook, saying that my job security is not guaranteed by simply adopting AI.

"Your future value depends on shifting your function from a content creator to an ethical supervisor and veracity gatekeeper over all information," Gemini said.

A helpful exercise

Simon Brown, global learning and development leader at EY, told me that EY's tool "helps to show and bring to life in a totally relevant way where AI might be able to help them."

My test wasn't exactly lab-grade science — I haven't seen the responses that EY's tool generates, or the prompts and programming behind it. What AI means for the future of journalism versus consulting are two very different questions.

Overall, the results didn't tell me that much I don't already know.

New AI tools can boost my efficiency, and verification and source-building — which have always been essential skills in journalism — are evolving alongside AI. But it was a helpful exercise to actively think about the future, and a reminder to spend time exploring what's out there.

• When I was growing up, my grandmother always suggested having pie for breakfast on Thanksgiving.
• We never did it then, but I always wanted to, and I finally tried it with my son when he was 2.
• We loved it so much that we've done it ever since, and it's our favorite holiday tradition.

Growing up, my grandmother would always say we should have our Thanksgiving pies for breakfast. I thought it was such a good idea, because by the time you're done eating dinner, you're really too full for dessert. My family never ended up going through with it, but the idea stuck with me.

When I had my son, I wanted to start our own holiday traditions together. I remembered the idea of having pie for breakfast and decided to try it. In order for the pie to be ready on Thanksgiving morning, I had to stay up the Wednesday night before to make everything. I thought an apple pie, a pumpkin pie, and fresh whipped cream would be perfect.

It went so well the first year, and we added on to the tradition

My son was only 2 years old the first year we tried it, so it was his first time trying everything. After I put him to bed, I stayed up cooking, while the SNL Thanksgiving special played on TV in the background. It all felt just right for me, as if I were figuring out the kind of holiday I wanted to have, not just for my son, but for myself too.

It wasn't easy putting everything away for the next morning without taste-tasting, but it felt so much more special to wait for Thanksgiving. When we woke up the next morning, I put the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on right away. I didn't even feel too bad about letting us eat pie for breakfast, because it was homemade and still full of apples and pumpkin.

My son looked at me as if I had made a mistake, but when I reassured him to go ahead and try it, he loved it. I had my pie with coffee, while he had his with milk. Although it was delicious, I think what made us most happy was being together and doing something out of the ordinary. Before the morning was even over, I knew this was going to be something we did forever.

Having pie for breakfast came with benefits I couldn't have predicted

In addition to establishing our tradition of having pie for breakfast, I also developed a special Thanksgiving coffee that morning by putting whipped cream in a mug first and then pouring hot coffee over it, creating something like a cappuccino. While I knew eating traditional Thanksgiving desserts for breakfast with my son to be fun, I wasn't expecting to establish other traditions that also felt personal and resonant for me, such as the surprising nostalgia for SNL that I felt as I watched the special (which I still do every year) and my new holiday coffee.

Since my son also spends time with his father on Thanksgiving, the new tradition has had some unforeseen benefits for coparenting over the holiday, too. His father and I do our best to ensure that our son sees each of us on holidays. So, for example, I would have my son for the first half of the day, and then he would go with his dad for the second half.

It was hard getting used to not being with my son for the whole day, but it's gotten easier. And part of that is because I found ways to make our holiday time together feel full. The Thanksgiving breakfast tradition allowed me to celebrate with my son and not feel as sad because I wasn't eating dinner with him later on. I think it helps my son in the same way, too, because he's doing something equally as special with each parent.

Our pie tradition has become the best part of Thanksgiving

My son is 12 now, and we have kept the tradition going ever since. When I'm feeling really ambitious, I make a pecan pie, too. When I remarried, we let my husband in on the ritual, and he loves it. We're both big coffee drinkers, and the pie and coffee combo is really perfect. Everything that happens for the rest of Thanksgiving after pie for breakfast is just a bonus, because we've already enjoyed the most important part of the holiday for us.

• MrBeast said his latest videos fell short and vows to enter 'ultra grind mode' in 2026.
• His promise echoes that of CEOs like Andy Jassy and John Stankey pushing hardcore office culture.
• As companies tie careers to metrics, MrBeast is pledging a creator-style productivity reset.

YouTube megastar MrBeast said he's gearing up for what he calls "ultra grind mode" — a pledge that places him squarely in the growing hardcore worker moment, reshaping both the creator economy and corporate America.

In a post on X on Wednesday, the 27-year-old creator, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, told his 33.4 million followers that he hasn't been fully satisfied with the quality of his latest videos.

"After some reflection, I just want to say I think some of our newer youtube videos haven't been as good as I wanted. I apologize," MrBeast wrote.

"Ya boy is going to go into ultra grind mode and make the greatest content of my life in 2026. Promise," he added.

The X post, which quickly garnered more than 2.9 million views as of Thursday morning, triggered a wave of encouragement from fans, who insisted his standards were already impossibly high.

But MrBeast doubled down.

When one commenter told him not to be so hard on himself, MrBeast replied: "Appreciate it but I'm going to take this stuff to a whole new level."

The creator version of a 'hardcore' reset

MrBeast's pledge mirrors a broader shift inside big companies, where bosses are dialing back talk of work-life balance and leaning into performance, presenteeism, and discipline.

Executives like AT&T CEO John Stankey and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy have pushed employees back to the office five days a week and tied careers more tightly to measurable output.

In a memo to AT&T managers in August, Stankey told staff the company is moving away from "familial cultural norms" toward "a more market-based culture — focused on rewarding capability, contribution, and commitment."

Meanwhile, Amazon CEO Jassy has slashed layers of management, toughened performance reviews, and reinforced Amazon's demanding culture.

Career experts say that in this landscape, staying employed means showing up, documenting wins, and proving how you drive results — not just how long you've been around.

• The US Coast Guard has a strict step-by-step process for stopping and boarding drug vessels.
• Its personnel train for a variety of situations, including needing to shoot out boat engines.
• Everything the Coast Guard gathers in an interdiction is helping build a case for prosecuting alleged traffickers.

USCG TACLET SOUTH OPA-LOCKA, Florida — At a time when a new war on drugs is brewing in the Caribbean, Business Insider grabbed a front-row seat as the Coast Guard trained to take down drug smugglers on the high seas.

Day in and day out, the Coast Guard is out on patrol for boats packed with hundreds of thousands of pounds of cocaine, marijuana, and other drugs, illegal narcotics with street values in the millions. Finding these drug boats on the open isn't chance, officials said. It's all carefully orchestrated, from the intelligence-gathering to the drone flights to the precision shots from a helicopter needed to cripple the engine of a vessel on the run.

The service follows a strict step-by-step process, relying on the training and experience of its pilots, precision marksmen, boarding teams, and other personnel.

In recent years, the Coast Guard has been seizing record numbers of drugs from its interdictions during deployments in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean, but drug smugglers out of South America keep them on their toes.

"The threat from narcotics traffickers and narco-terrorists is constantly evolving," Cmdr. Chris Guy, commanding officer of Coast Guard South's Tactical Law Enforcement Team, told Business Insider. "They are changing their tactics in order to try to elude detection and interdiction all the time."

They switch up drug routes and vessels, shifting from "go-fast boats" to semi-submersibles, vessels more commonly called narco-subs. But as the smugglers adapt, the Coast Guard does, too.

Finding drug boats on the high seas

The hunt starts with eyes in the sky. Drones, patrol planes, and helicopter crews sweep the ocean for fast-moving boats suspected of carrying drugs north to the US.

The Coast Guard refers to vessels potentially carrying drugs as "targets of interest." They keep an eye out for a number of potential red flag indicators, such as suspected drugs packages aboard the ship, the number of people on the vessel, weapons, even how many engines the boat has.

While the Coast Guard gathers intel, it tries to avoid accidentally tipping its hand, so it can take time.

The time it takes to gather the necessary data "all depends on the assets being applied to it," Capt. Daniel Broadhurst, the commanding officer of the Coast Guard's Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron, told Business Insider.

The Coast Guard can draw critical intelligence from whatever's in the air — Navy P-8 Poseidons or its own assets, such as the HC-130Js, MQ-35 V-BAT drones, or MH-65 Dolphin helicopters. Depending on the mix of assets available, spotting and tracking a suspect vessel can take 15 minutes, a few hours, or a full day.

Every detail is important, as it may help the Coast Guard build a case that can be used to prosecute smugglers once the drugs are seized and arrests are made, either in the US or the country of origin.

After wrapping up the recon phase, a helicopter crew is sent out to order the vessel to stop for boarding. If the suspected smugglers ignore the warning blaring over the loudspeakers, a gunner leans into the mounted machine gun and rakes three short bursts across the waves — the Coast Guard’s last warning before escalating and taking aim at the engines.

If the vessel doesn't heed the initial warnings, a precision marksman takes the next step, disabling the boat's engines with a rifle shot. Coordination with the pilots on position, angle, and speed is critical to making the shot count.

There's standard script, Lt. Cmdr. Jamel Chokr, a pilot and mission commander at HITRON, said, "so theoretically, I could meet a gunner tomorrow, never have spoken to them, and we could walk out to an aircraft and affect an interdiction, and we could do it relatively seamlessly."

He said that if the pilot and gunner have been flying together for some time, "you start really syncing up with them."

Drug boats sometimes have several engines on them, or paneling that's intended to shield the engines from a clean shot. The smugglers will sometimes try to use their own body to protect the engine, forcing the shooter to adjust to avoid injuring or killing someone not directly engaged in hostilities.

If someone aboard the boat falls or jumps into the water, the helicopter team has to seamlessly switch from interdiction to search and rescue mode, prioritizing throwing out life vests or flotation devices to those people while also keeping the drug vessel in sight. If the smugglers toss the drugs into the water, the crew will throw down devices to mark that location.

Once the target boat is disabled, the Coast Guard moves into the endgame phase. The helicopter team keeps their eyes and weapons on the vessel while the boarding team arrives.

Boarding drug vessels

The Coast Guard's boarding teams position their vessels alongside the drug boat and begin what can be a highly dangerous process: the initial boarding can range in difficulty depending on the state of the seas, weather, time of day, and crew compliance.

Night time raids can be particularly risky, the darkness complicating even simple procedures.

The boarding crews have methods for disrupting and disabling vessels if needed, such as shouldering the boat, spraying fire houses, and using entanglers. Sometimes, how the interdiction process goes down is more of a leap-frog between teams, which makes communications between personnel essential.

After boarding, Coast Guard personnel want to swiftly take control of the vessel, including locating and apprehending any suspected smugglers, determining the origin and nationality of the boat and its crew, and investigating the drugs aboard. A translator will often come along to help gather information.

The boarding team also needs to be prepared for things to unexpectedly go south. If drug runners jump overboard, the mission switches to search and rescue. If they have weapons, the team has to neutralize them. Worst-case scenarios are anything that put the lives of the boarding team in danger.

If a vessel is stateless — no flag, no documents, and a silent crew — the Coast Guard enforces US maritime law. If it's registered to another country, the process gets more complex, requiring coordination with that government under existing law enforcement agreements.

Collecting all evidence aboard a drug boat is intense and can take hours. The team extensively takes pictures of the vessel and equipment and the drugs.

Coast Guard crews go through and swab for drug residue, map the vessel for hidden compartments, detain the crew, and search electronics for evidence while verifying identities and criminal backgrounds. The seized drugs are stored aboard a cutter and later offloaded to federal agencies in port.

A precise legal process

Every interdiction hinges on legal approvals that must move up and down the chain of command, from Coast Guard leadership to law enforcement partners, often leaving boarding teams waiting for the green light to act.

"There's a lot of legalities that come into play," Coast Guard maritime law enforcement specialist Morgan Fussell told Business Insider. "And if you do any of those prior to getting full law enforcement authority, then the case obviously could be inadmissible in court and get thrown out."

Finding drug vessels, getting permission to stop them, and seizing the cargo also relies on interagency cooperation, including with the Joint Interagency Task Force South.

Coast Guard helicopter and boarding teams regularly also find themselves aboard US Navy warships, as well as vessels belonging to international allies and partners. On those deployments, the priority is balancing interdictions with other objectives and missions.

At its core, the success of the service's interdiction boils down to pursuing those interdictions precisely but also remaining flexible as things change. "Drug smugglers are ever evolving, and we do a really good job of training for that," Chokr said. "So it's kind of a cat-and-mouse game."

• Nothing conveys our sci-fi future quite like the humanoid robot.
• Bouyed by AI, robot companies are now commanding eye-popping funding rounds.
• These bots are quietly becoming fixtures in factories and may soon be folding your laundry.

Science fiction is imaginary — until, suddenly, it isn't.

We are now on the brink of living in a world populated by humanoid robot assistants, a timeless trope of futuristic fiction. Right now, it's more the world of the "Jetsons" than that of "Terminator," but that's not always readily apparent when you see the tall, sleek robots that companies are eagerly demoing.

The founders of some of America's most promising robotics startups say that we're not far away from a world in which humanoid robots are autonomously completing tasks in the home and on factory floors.

Business Insider compiled a list of some of the most well-known US companies in the space to highlight the current state of the humanoid robotics industry — and where it's headed.

• Members of Congress tend to be wealthier than the American public.
• But some are ultra-rich: There are eight US senators worth roughly $50 million or more.
• Half of them were only elected last year, and six of them are Republicans.

You probably already knew that members of Congress tend to be wealthy. What you may not realize is that some of them are ultrawealthy.

Eight members of the US Senate are worth about $50 million or more, according to their most recent financial disclosures. One of them may be a billionaire. And there are several others who, though not nearly as wealthy, are still multi-millionaires.

Six of the eight wealthiest senators are Republicans. And four of those six were only elected last year.

That's no coincidence: Ahead of a 2024 election cycle in which costly Senate races were expected in several states, GOP leaders explicitly sought to recruit wealthy businessmen to run for seats in the upper chamber.

That allowed the party to rely on self-funding by those candidates, decreasing the burden shared by the party's donor base.

This list is based on an analysis of the assets and liabilities disclosed in each senator's annual financial disclosures covering 2024, which are the most recent available. Assets owned by their spouses are included.

Members of Congress are not required to disclose the exact dollar values of their assets and liabilities, but rather a range of values. They are also not required to disclose the value of their personal residences.

Senators are listed in descending order based on the sum of the minimum value of their assets.